by Tracy Wolff
“I sprained my ankle,” I snark. “I’m not dying of consumption.”
“Yeah, well, the night is young.”
“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” I glare at him.
“It means you’ve been here three days, and this is the second time I’ve had to get you out of trouble.”
“Seriously? You’re going to hold me responsible for a windstorm now?”
“I am.” He wraps his hand around my calf and gently but firmly eases my leg over the edge of the bed so he can look at my ankle. “You didn’t see Macy falling out of her tree, did you?”
“It wasn’t—” Macy starts, but no way am I going to let him get away with blaming me for this.
“Her branch didn’t break!” I interrupt. “Mine did. What was I supposed to do? Grab on to the trunk and— Oww!” I try to yank my foot away as he probes at a particularly sore spot.
He ignores me, though his touch—already soft—gets even gentler. “There’s no swelling and only a little bruising, so I don’t think you broke anything.”
“I already told you it was just sprained.” I pull my leg away, but with much less force this time. Something about the feel of his hands on my leg, his skin against mine, has me especially unnerved. “You can go now.”
This time, the look he gives me is half amused, half don’t push your luck. And, despite that, also super sexy. Which is completely absurd, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Heather would die if she saw me now—two small steps away from whimpering and sighing over some ridiculously commanding guy. It’s gross, and normally I’d put him in his place. But the fact that he’s all growly like this because he’s worried about me and wanting to make sure I’m okay? I don’t know. Somehow it makes a difference.
“Should I get ice?” Macy asks for the first time since Jaxon overrode her objection. She’s currently standing near her bed, all but wringing her hands and trying not to show how freaked out she is that Jaxon is in our room.
I turn to answer—and hopefully reassure her—but realize she’s talking to Jaxon. You know, the guy she spent ten minutes warning me about before the snowball fight. “Et tu, Brute?” I say with a roll of my eyes.
She shrugs, a little shamefaced, as Jaxon answers, “That’d be great.” Then she all but runs to the door—at least until he smiles his thanks. Then she freezes. Like, actually freezes in the middle of walking, one foot off the floor. “Also,” he adds, “do you happen to have an Ace bandage? I can wrap her foot before I go.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Macy?”
She still doesn’t answer.
Jaxon glances at me, both brows raised, but I just roll my eyes. Then clap extra-loud to get her attention.
“Macy?”
“Oh yeah. Ice. I’m on it.”
“So no bandage, then?” Jaxon asks.
“And a bandage. Yes. Absolutely. I have a few, actually.” Suddenly she’s stumbling over her words and her feet as she rushes to her bureau and starts wildly opening drawers.
She finally finds what she’s looking for in the bottom drawer and spins around, a tightly wrapped hot-pink bandage in her hand. “Does this work, Jaxon?”
“It’s perfect, thanks.”
She glows under his praise, and it’s all I can do not to make a teasing comment. But seriously, if she’s not careful, she’s going to turn into one of his minions. So much for you can tell me how he hurt you. Traitor.
I reach out to take the bandage from her, but Jaxon gets there first. “I really can do it, you know,” I tell him.
“Maybe I want to do it for you.”
As she heads for the door, Macy makes a sound like the melting is actually starting, and even I have to admit, it’s a good line. Then again, convincing myself to like Jaxon has never been hard. I’ve been attracted to him from the very beginning, even when I was also supremely annoyed by him.
“What? No protests?” he asks a little sardonically.
“Are you going to wrap it or not?” I grouse, ignoring his question because answering it would be too embarrassing.
He ducks his head and gets to work, but not before I see the small grin he’s got going on. His scar pulls on the very edges of his lips, but that just turns the smile into a crooked little smirk that is a million times hotter than it should be.
His fingers are cold as he wraps up my ankle, but his hands are so, so gentle. I find myself relaxing despite myself, my muscles going lax as he strokes a finger back and forth against my calf.
And when I say his name this time, even I can hear the yearning. His head snaps up, his dark, bottomless gaze locking with mine.
His hand on my leg becomes firmer, more insistent as he leans in just a little. His wildly sexy scent seems even stronger now than it did when he was carrying me. It fills my senses, makes my mouth water and my hands ache to touch him. Makes me want to press my face into the curve of his neck and just breathe him in.
I’m already on edge from his closeness, and these new longings he sets off in me have my breath catching in my throat. My heart goes wild and, as he leans in just a little farther, my whole body lights up like the aurora borealis I’m still dying to see.
“Grace.” He says my name like it’s a promise. It’s the last straw, and I gasp, full-on melting commencing deep inside me. I’d say his name back, but I’ve lost control of my vocal cords. And pretty much the rest of my body, too.
His hand comes up to cup my cheek, and I close my eyes, lean into the caress. And then nearly jump out of my skin as the door crashes open and he yanks his hand back.
“I’ve got the ice,” Macy says. “I even crushed it up and—” She stops cold, her eyes going wide as she senses the tension in the air. With the way Jaxon is leaning over me, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what she interrupted, and for a second, it looks like she’s going to ease her way back out of the room.
But then the moment is gone, and Jaxon is standing up, heading toward the door himself. “Put the ice on for twenty minutes and see how it feels. If it isn’t better, ice it again in an hour. Got it?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it,” I manage to croak out of my still-tight throat.
“Excellent.” He risks giving Macy another smile, then shakes his head as she whimpers just a little. He doesn’t say anything else until he’s about to walk out of my room. Then he turns around, hand on the doorknob, and says, “Stay away from Flint, Grace. He’s not what you think.”
The words chase away the last of my vocal paralysis—and goodwill. “Flint and I are friends. And you don’t get to tell me what to do.” I have just enough self-control not to add, No matter how much you intrigue me.
I expect him to fire back with something—God knows he’s arrogant enough to believe he should be instantly obeyed—but instead he just tilts his head and watches me for several long seconds. Then he says, “Okay.”
“Okay?” I narrow my eyes at his easy acquiescence. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He turns to go.
“I didn’t think it would be that easy.”
He gives me his inscrutable look, the one I’m already coming to hate. “This is going to be a lot of things, Grace. Easy isn’t one of them.”
And then he’s gone. As usual.
Double damn it.
22
Baby,
It’s Hot in Here…
For several seconds after Jaxon leaves, I wait for the other shoe to drop…in this case, a rainbow-colored Converse in the form of Macy demanding to know what’s going on between us. Which I can already see is going to be a problem on a lot of levels, most obviously the one where I have no idea about what’s going on between us. If anything.
Yes, Jaxon has sought me out twice today, but I have no idea what that means. Or even if it means anything.
And what was that parting shot
about, anyway? This is going to be a lot of things, Grace. Easy isn’t one of them? Who even says that? Was he saying that he’s interested in me? Or that he isn’t?
Ugh. Why do guys have to be so complicated?
Maybe he’s just playing with me because he’s bored or something. Because I’m fresh meat out here in the middle of nowhere. But he didn’t look bored after the snowball fight—in fact, he looked pissed as hell at Flint. Which is ridiculous, considering Flint saved me from a concussion or a broken leg or worse.
But a guy who isn’t interested doesn’t act like Jaxon did, right? He doesn’t have the kind of temper tantrum—and it was a tantrum, despite how cold it was—that Jaxon had in the middle of that forest because he thought Flint had put me at risk.
Does he?
I don’t think so…but then, what do I know? I’ve only ever had one boyfriend, and the way I felt about Gabe was nothing like this. I mean, it was a decent relationship, I guess. We had been friends for years, and it just kind of drifted into something different for a while. We went places together, made out sometimes, did all the usual stuff. But it was easy with Gabe. He never made me feel like Jaxon does, never made my breath catch and my hands sweat and my stomach flip from just a look. I never spent hours obsessing over his every word, never found myself longing for his touch the way I do for Jaxon’s.
I just wish I knew how Jaxon felt.
“Oh my God.”
Apparently, Macy has finally snapped out of whatever weird Jaxon-induced coma she’s been in for the last five minutes. I shoot her a look. “Don’t start.”
“Oh. My. God. OmigodOmigodOmigod. What just happened?”
“I fell out of a tree. Flint saved me from dying. Jaxon carried me back to the dorm because I sprained my ankle.” I say it all very flippantly, hoping if I keep it casual, if I don’t let Macy know how messed up my own head is, she’ll let things drop.
“Those are just the details.” She flops down on my bed, careful not to jostle my ankle as she does.
“I’m pretty sure the details are what’s important here.”
“Not right now they aren’t! Right now, it’s all about the big picture.”
“And what exactly is the big picture?” I ask.
“That the two most popular boys in school are obsessed with you.”
I nearly strangle myself on my sweatshirt as I try to get a look at her face to see if she’s kidding or not. “I wouldn’t say they’re obsessed,” I finally manage to get out once I untie my hoodie strings and stop strangling myself in the process. “And aren’t you the one who was just warning me to stay as far away from Jaxon as I could get?”
“Yeah, but that was before.”
“Before what?” I demand.
“Before I saw how he looks at you.” She closes her eyes and makes a sound very close to the one she made when Jaxon smiled at her. “I wish Cam would look at me like that.”
“You want your boyfriend to look at you like he’s an arrogant prick used to getting his own way?”
“Yeah, he pretty much does that already,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I want him to look at me like it physically hurts him not to be touching me.”
“Jaxon doesn’t look at me like that.” I’m beginning to think it’s how I look at him, though.
Macy snorts. “Baby, if that boy wanted you any more, he would spontaneously combust.”
Her words warm me, make me feel like I might spontaneously combust—especially if I spend much longer thinking about Jaxon. That guy is way too hot for his own good…or my own peace of mind. And if Macy’s right, if he’s thinking even a quarter of the things I’m thinking about him…
“Is it hot in here?” I start to shrug out of the million and three layers of clothing I’m currently wearing.
“After three days of watching you be miserable in the cold, I never thought I’d hear you say that,” Macy teases as she grabs hold of my snow pants and starts tugging at them hard enough to pull me halfway down the bed. “Guess all it takes to warm you is getting up close and personal with the most dangerous boy at Katmere Academy.”
I slap at her hands. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to help you. These things are hard to get out of if you can’t stand.” She yanks and tugs some more and still doesn’t get much accomplished.
“It’s okay; I can do it.” I bat her hands away and stand up so that my weight is balanced on my unhurt leg as I slide off both the snow and fleece pants I’m wearing. Which leaves me in long underwear and wool socks, both of which are a million times more comfortable than the outerwear I’d been sweating in.
Macy strips off her own layers and doesn’t say anything else until we’re both settled back on my bed again. Then she looks me straight in the eye and says, “You’ve procrastinated long enough. Now spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill.” I slip under the covers and lean my back up against the wall. “You’re the one who said the different cliques never mix.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have a clique yet, so apparently the rules don’t apply to you. And as for having nothing to spill, I call bullshit on that. You’ve been here exactly seventy-two hours—and I’ve been with you most of those hours, by the way. Not all of them, obviously, because I had no idea the two hottest boys in school were going to have a massive pissing contest over you in front of half the senior class.” She gives me an incredulous look. “When did this happen? How did this happen?”
“Nothing’s happened, I swear. Flint and I are just friends—”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. He’s really nice, but he’s never done anything even remotely un-friend-like.”
Macy rolls her eyes. “You mean like carrying you up the staircase or going out of his way to invite you to a snowball fight?”
“You asked him to carry me up the stairs. Altitude sickness, remember?”
“Yeah, and did I also ask him to dive out of a tree to save your life?”
“I’m sure he thought you would have asked if there was time.”
“Oh my God! You are so annoying.” She flops back against the bed. “I can’t decide if you’re lying to yourself or if you’re just this naive.”
“I’m not lying. And I’m not naive.” I give her my most sincere look. “I swear, Macy. There’s nothing going on between Flint and me.”
She studies me for a second, then nods. “Okay, fine. But I notice you didn’t say the same thing about you and Jaxon.”
“Jaxon and me… Jaxon is… I mean, we’re… I don’t…” I trail off, cheeks burning, because even I can tell how incoherent and ridiculous I sound. “Ugh.”
“Wow.” Now Macy’s eyes are huge. “That serious, huh?”
I don’t know what to say, so I almost don’t say anything at all. Except Macy has gone to school here a lot longer than I have, which means she knows a lot more about Jaxon than I do, and I would really like to benefit from a little of that knowledge.
“It’s complicated.” I expect her to ask what’s complicated about it, but she doesn’t. Instead she just nods like, of course it is. “He’s not really dangerous like you said, is he?”
Even as I ask the question, I know the answer…which is, hell yeah, he is. And you should stay as far away from him as you possibly can.
I mean, he’s never been anything but gentle when he touched me, but it’s as plain as the scar on his face that Jaxon isn’t like the other boys I’ve known. Every single thing about him screams danger—of the dark and brutally wounded variety. It’s in his eyes, in his voice, in the way he holds himself and the way he moves.
I recognize it, even acknowledge it. But when I’m near him, that doesn’t matter. When I’m near him, nothing matters but getting closer, even though it’s obvious he’s been hurt before and just as obvious that he’s determined to protect himself. Was i
t his brother’s death that did this to him? Or is Hudson just one piece of a much bigger puzzle?
My instincts say it’s the latter, but I haven’t known him long enough to be sure.
Silence stretches between us for several long seconds. I watch Macy, who pretty much has the opposite of a poker face, as she tries to figure out what to say. It takes a little while, but finally she settles on, “He’s not Silence of the Lambs dangerous. He’s not going to drop you in a pit and starve you so he can make a dress out of your skin or anything.”
I burst into incredulous laughter. “Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got? He’s not going to make a dress out of my skin?”
She shrugs. “I also said he wouldn’t starve you in a pit.”
“It’s Alaska. You’d need a professional oil drill to make a pit in the frozen ground.”
“Exactly.” She holds her hands out in an obvious gesture. “See, told you he wouldn’t do it.”
“Are you trying to be reassuring here, or are you trying to scare the hell out of me?”
“Yes.” She bats her eyes at me. “Is it working?”
“I have no freaking idea.”
My phone buzzes, and I almost ignore it. But it has to be Heather—Macy’s the only one at Katmere who’s got my number—and right now, I could use a little of my BFF’s brand of sanity.
Heather: How was your first day of classes?
Heather: Any hot guys in your English class?
Heather: Or hot girls? Asking for a friend…
She includes the dtf emoji in the last one, and I laugh despite myself. Then take a quick pic of Macy in her tank top and long underwear, who fakes a pouty pose when I say it’s my BFF back home, and answer:
Me: ALL the hot girls.
Heather: Ugh. Mean
Heather: How was class?
Me: Altitude sickness kept me home. But I’m going tomorrow
And then, because Heather can go on forever and I want to finish this conversation about how Jaxon isn’t an actual movie serial killer, I text: